Changing the Line-Up

Stirring the dust that has settled over Canadian politics, Liberal Prime Minis ter Lester B. Pearson last week announced the biggest Cabinet overhaul of any government since World War II. Of 25 ministries, ten were reorganized. Five ministers were shifted out of their jobs into new ones, and five old faces, two of them touched by the scandals that rocked Pearson's Cabinet last year, were replaced altogether. Said Pearson bluntly: "The nature of governmental problems is altering to a dramatic degree. These changes are designed to improve efficiency and better serve the needs of the Canadian people."

Out & In. The massive shake-up came little more than a month after the national election in which Pearson confidently expected to win a real mandate for his 29-month minority government but came away from the polls with the same old minority. One of the top men to go was Pearson's erstwhile Finance Minister, Walter Gordon, an old crony whose advice led the Liberals into the dogfall election. Gordon resigned immediately after the election. Of the old ministers, only a few came out of the shuffle with increased stature, and the most important of them is Gordon's replacement, Mitchell Sharp, former Minister of Trade and Commerce and the shrewd negotiator who in the last two years has sold $1.7 billion worth of wheat to Russia and Red China. To make sure it continues, Sharp will keep his hat as overseer of the Canadian Wheat Board.

While that makes Sharp one of Pearson's most powerful lieutenants, most of the interest in Ottawa last week was concentrated on the new men Pearson has brought into his Cabinet--among whom the Liberals may one day find their next leader. In answer to a news man's question, Pearson declared: "I'm carrying on." But he is 68 now, and some observers think he may step down after another year or so.

An Aim. One new name that stands out is Jean Marchand, 47, who will head Pearson's proposed Ministry of Manpower, dealing with everything from citizenship and immigration to employment. An able Quebec labor leader and attractive vote getter, he is the first French Canadian in years to hold a Cabinet post with real economic power and is obviously a man in whom Pearson sees possibilities.

A better man to watch is Robert Winters, 55, a longtime Pearson friend and new Minister of Trade and Commerce. Tall and handsome, Winters is a successful businessman-politician with credentials that make him a man of admired organizational ability. Canadians remember him as the youngest member of Louis St. Laurent's Cabinet in the late 1940s and early '50s; he then left politics to take over the presidency of the Rio Tinto Mining Co. of Canada, Ltd., and only re-entered politics this fall at Pearson's pleading.

Critics complain that Winters is more a manipulator than a man of ideas, that he has no genuine political philosophy. "It all indicates to me that I'm pretty much a middle-of-the-roader," says Winters, "which is just what I aim to be." And on the early line, at least, his aim makes him the experts' favorite to be Mike Pearson's successor.

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